


a song for lovers

by sydneychase



Category: The Outsiders - All Media Types
Genre: Death, F/M, Gen, Loss, Oneshot, Sadness, maybe i'll write more idk, this is sad i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 23:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4325751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sydneychase/pseuds/sydneychase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's led a life of sorrow and sadness and anger, but there was love there too. There was a love that she'd only just found and had been clinging to since she found it, and now she was leaving that love behind. For that, she cried more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a song for lovers

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so I didn't want to make a whole entire other story with my OC in it so I wrote this. If you want me to write the whole story just let me know. The Outsiders belongs to S.E Hinton and Stephanie Marksburg is mine. Comments, feedback, and kudos are greatly appreciated!

I was told the story a thousand times, and it was a sad story right from the beginning. If you grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, then you knew who Stephanie Marksburg. It didn't matter if it was nineteen sixty five or forty years after that, every kid knew the story, and every kid knew who she was. Every kid knew who the two lonely graves at the back of the cemetery belonged to, and every kid knew the story of how those two people ended up there. But that's not where our story starts. Our story starts on a lonely street in the middle of a summer's night in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the year nineteen sixty five. In the light of a buzzing streetlamp lays a girl with wild dirty blonde hair, nicotine on her breath, and a switchblade clutched in her hand. Her breathes are labored and her chest burns and she cries. She cries for herself because she's alone, and she's scared. She cries for the legacy or lack thereof, that she's leaving behind. But most of all she cries because she, and everyone who ever met her, knew that she would go out that way. She coughs, and it's a wet noise, and she knows that what she feels running down her chin is blood, and she knows that she has but few more seconds on this earth. She's led a life of sorrow and sadness and anger, but there was love there too. There was a love that she'd only just found and had been clinging to since she found it, and now she was leaving that love behind. For that, she cried more. She took one last rattling breath and stared up at the stars, and then she was still. She wasn't found until morning, when someone almost ran over her body on their way to work. The police had come, and the medical examiner had been called. The medical examiner took her to the morgue and they called him down to identify her body, and as the word Stephanie fell across his lips, a choked sob came with it. Then she was buried, and people mourned and then all Stephanie Marksburg had left behind was a headstone and more pain and suffering than she had gone through herself. All that was left of Stephanie Marksburg was a switchblade and a Polaroid picture of the one time she actually smiled.   
A year later, I met Ponyboy Curtis, the boy that loved Stephanie Marksburg for all she was, and the boy that had been shattered by her death. I fell in love with him, and for what I knew, he loved me too, or at least he tried. From what I knew, Ponyboy Curtis had been happy once. He was good in school, he laughed, he wrote, he read, he drew. But that was gone once I met him. Once I met him, his laugh seemed broken, and smiling seemed foreign on his lips. But he'd tried. He tried to make me happy, and he'd tried to love me, but I knew that every time we kissed he was kissing her instead of me. And I knew that every time that we had sex, he was having sex with her instead of me. I understand now, but it was a lot for a sixteen year old to take in. I knew that Ponyboy Curtis was being held together by string and once that string unraveled, he was destined to come crashing down. I saw the result of the un-raveling string a few weeks before it all ended. He was drunk and a cigarette was pinched between his lips, and a switchblade was held in his hands and he looked like he was unsure what to do with it. I'd seen the lines of scars up his arms before but watching him take a deep breath before dragging the glinting silver of the knife across his skin seemed to hurt me as much as it should have been hurting him. Instead, he let out a bitter laugh and slurred out and excuse and a reason why I shouldn't be bothered. That night I got drunk for the first time in my life and I realized why Pony loved the numbness so much. That night was the first night I began to understand. I began to understand how much Pony missed her and I was told this story, her story as his words slurred together and a few stray tears made their way down his cheeks. Two weeks later we were walking home from the drive in when a stray car came barreling down the street and threw Pony from where he stood. I screamed and I cried and knelt down next to him and took his hand in my own as he stared up at the sky and I swore he was smiling as he looked up at the stars. He coughed and blood made its way out of his mouth and it stained his teeth and a broad grin made its way up his face. He choked one last time before the word Stephanie fell across his lips and his eyes didn't open again. That night I let go of his hand and I pulled my knees to my chest and I don't know if I cried for Pony, or for myself, but I cried. I cried until my chest burned and I cried until I had nothing left. When Pony's brother's found us, I was leaning up against a fence, my knees pulled to my chest and a blank look on my face. Soda was sobbing and Darry just stood there with a look of shock as he stared down at his baby brother laying dead on the pavement. I wanted to say something but there was nothing I could think of that felt right. At the funeral, it rained and both brothers looked like they'd had the life sucked out of them. It was at the funeral that I realized that Ponyboy Curtis had loved Stephanie Marksburg more than I once thought was humanly possible. She was the best thing that ever happen to him and I was stupid to think that I could somehow take her place. Even so, Darry and Soda pulled me into their arms and thanked me for being there for their little brother. I wanted to say that I wasn't there at all. I wanted to say that I was the last person that Pony was thinking about when he died, but I said nothing. I took their compliments and looked back at Pony's grave that was right next to hers.   
I was sixteen when he died, and I hated Stephanie Marksburg for taking something that I thought I deserved, but now I understand. I understand that from the second she was born, Stephanie Marksburg was doomed. She lead a life of sadness, pain, and loss, and whether or not it seemed like it, Pony had lead a similar life. Somehow they found each other and they'd reassembled each other, and all those pieces that Stephanie had put back together came flying apart when she died, and Ponyboy Curtis didn't have long.   
Darry Curtis worked more hours and he never liked being home. He was quiet and brooding and in an indescribable amount of pain. Even in his last miserable year, Ponyboy had still meant the world to his big brother. Now that he was gone, Darry didn't know what to do. He hardly ever laughed or smiled. But the end of it all for Darry was when Soda died at twenty one, almost two years to the date after Pony. It was a drunk driving indecent, and then Darry was the last of the Curtis boys. He died a year and a half after Soda.   
Sodapop Curtis took his little brother's death about as well as someone takes a gunshot to the forehead. He spiraled out of control and just being in his old house made him sick. Pony's clothes still hung in the closet and just the sight of them made Soda ball his fists in anger. So he moved out and then died in a drunk driving crash two weeks later.   
No one was around, so I took it upon myself to tell the story, starting with Stephanie. I told her story and then I told the story of the Curtis boys. I made sure that people knew that the two lonely graves in the back of the cemetery belonged to two people who loved each other so much, death seemed like a blessing to one of them just so he could see the other again. I made sure that Stephanie and Curtis boys weren't forgotten because after the lives they lead, they deserved to be known. They deserved more than what they got out of life, and I just hope that maybe, just maybe, they're happy wherever they are now.


End file.
